Recent advances in confocal microscopy for studying drug delivery to the eye: concepts and pharmaceutical applications.

Since its seminal introduction 50years ago, confocal microscopy has been applied in numerous fields in life sciences. This review presents the different key elements of confocal microscopes, in particular scanning techniques, light sources and especially laser sources are described in this review. Furthermore, an overview of the different image processing systems coupled with confocal microscopy is provided. The chapter closes with the applications of confocal microscopy in drug delivery to the eye. Copyright 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.